Oceania Books

The author does an excellent job of describing and illustrating key milestones in the mapping of the Pacific region. He integrates the history of exploration and of cartography in an effective manner that adds life to the plentiful and abundant maps that illustrate the text. The book is an excellent introduction for the serious collector of antique maps of the Pacific. Its a beautiful book and informative book, however, it could be a difficult read at times for those less interested in maps or history.

"The European mapping of the Pacific was at times a mapping of the European psyche," writes Thomas Suarez.
The mere fact that the Europeans did it, at such cost, was an aspect of a unique psychological outlook. The people who lived in and around the Pacific never bothered.
There were a variety of reasons, some merely technical, for that. For whatever reasons, the indigenes were content with local maps. The drive to know the whole world did not inspire them.
The Europeans had crass motivations as well. After 300 years of effort, there were still a few spots unknown to them in 1800 -- and even as a big a place as Hawaii had been found barely two decades earlier. But in the 19th century the quest for "sandalwood, trepang, seals, whales and furs" exposed every last scrap of land to purchasers of European maps.
"Early Mapping of the Pacific" follows on Suarez's gorgeous "Early Mapping of Southeast Asia" and will have even more interest for Hawaii readers. Hawaii gets more detailed attention than anyplace else, and it is easy to see that Suarez has spent plenty of time here.
He writes that "often the mapping and exploration of the Pacific seems the stuff of novels," and his own late entry into the field was, if not novelistic, distinctly unusual.
A classical violinist, Suarez was giving concerts way off Broadway -- places like Moen island in Chuuk in Micronesia -- when he became interested in the places, the people, the stories and the maps.
For a generation, he's been an authority and consultant on old maps.
Even without the detailed text, it is easy and curious to follow the progress -- sometimes regress -- of European knowledge of the Pacific over time.
When the Pacific was completely unknown to Europe, the best maps Europe had already showed close correspondence with the shapes and locations of the Caribbean and Africa, though the Caribbean had been unknown 20 years earlier.
Often -- not always, by any means -- the Europeans in their restless inquisition acquired accurate maps almost overnight. Even in fairly early maps, some parts of the Pacific begin to look quite familiar, though others remain seriously confused. It took a long time, for example, to learn that Australia and New Guinea are not connected.
Even by the time of James Cook, a buyer of maps in Amsterdam or London had to choose between very different opinions about what lay in the Pacific.
One topic that Suarez devotes considerable attention to is whether the Spaniards found Hawaii before Cook did in 1779.
There are early maps that show islands about where Hawaii is.
Suarez is not persuaded that they represent anything more than the other fugitive islands that cartographers in Europe were led and misled to draw on maps even into the 19th century.
There is an even stronger argument against Spanish discovery.
The maps that show "Hawaii" show other islands to the east and to the west that we know do not exist, and the accuracy of these maps for the west coast of America is poor also.
If "Hawaii" on those maps is genuine, it is the only part that is.

The review of this volume suggests that it is a worthy work of some substance (as do comments elsewhere). But only one star? Is this an error?

This is a vast topic and the author has taken on a huge job. He has written a truly excellent text that is technically correct, yet very readable. He has also managed to do somethig very difficult - integrate the text successfully with maps, most of which are illustrated beautifully. So in one work, we have the scholarly interpretation of the history and its integration with the cultural artifacts of such exploration.- the maps. I think one of the chief attributes is that his book has opened so many doors to this subject that it will reman a standard for a very ong time. It is also a beautiful production (although the subtitle sounds like it was written by a desperate English major) and is easily in the fine tradition of Suarez' other books.

If you buy this guide, don't bother buying Frommer's Hawaii 2006. Most of it is word for word.

I have been very fortunate. I have had the oportunity to visit Hawai'i three times: The Big Island once, and Maui twice. I used a prevoius edition of this Frommer's Guide for a lot of my planning.

I like the listings of inexpensive hotels, B&B's, restaurants and activities in the book. Inexpensive does not mean poor quality. I have never been disappointed when following the advice in the Guide. I also enjoy the recommendations and maps included.

I find the Frommer's Guides to be very helpful, and have used other Frommer's Guides for trip planning: The Canadian Rockies, New Mexico, Yellowstone National Park, Florida for $ a Day, and San Francisco to name a few. They are a good starting point for planning a vacation.

Overall a pretty good guide to the islands. However, I did have a few complaints:
Some of the places off the beaten path were not well described in terms of directions (and if not for helpful locals, I never would have reached them)
Restaurant data was often out of date (restaurant closed or completely redone), and poorer restaurants were sometimes recommended while the better ones were left off.
I was able to find a lot of better deals (or found out after the fact about better deals available) than listed in the book.
If you know nothing about Hawaii, it's a good bood to have. I will look for a different guide for my next trip.

On my trips to the Islands, I've found this book to be an excellent source of hotel, B&B, and restaurant recommendations. It is not the best overall guide, but it IS the best source of info for the above items. I've found that by taking this book along with the Lonely Planet (which is the best overall guide but is weak on lodging & restaurants) I have all the info I need to plan & enjoy my vacations to Hawaii.

I've used this book for travel to Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island, and have never found any of the reviews to be far off base. Highly recommended!

This book may be good for the ones who want to hike in Northern South Wales. Unfortunately Amazon did not have the "search inside" tool, so I could not check if the Blue Mountains were included. They were not, and I had to return the book.

This book is great for short one or two day hikes it is not what I was actually looking for. It had really good information and descriptions of hikes although I was looking for much longer hikes of weeks not days. The title of the book should mention that they are short one and two day hikes.

I used the book this summer while traveling in the northern part of Queensland. I found it to be an ideal companion to the more general guides (Lonely Planet, Fodor's, etc.). The book helped my husband and me to figure out the best places to hike, when we had fairly limited time and many things we wanted to do. It provides the perfect amount of information in a useful format; for each hike the author lists trail distance, hiking time, level of difficulty, and main attractions, and then gives a helpful description of what hikers will see. The author also provides brief descriptions of parks and state forests. I like that the book describes hikes of varied lengths and difficulty. I highly recommend this book to people of any age or fitness who want to hike in the northeastern part of Australia.

Hiking Tropical Australia: Queensland And Northern New South Wales is a comprehensive, "traveler friendly" walking guide to Australia's eastern tropical and subtropical regions. Covering an area of approximately 1600 miles beginning around Grafton (in northern New South Wales) and reaching down into the lower portion of wild, rugged Cape York Peninsula (in farm north Queensland), Hiking Tropical Australia coverage extends inland as well to include national parks such as Girraween and Carnarvon that lie in the transition zone between tropical and outback landscapes. Enhanced with more than 100 maps and pictures, Hiking Tropical Australia divides topical Australia into six zones defined by ecology and topography: the eastern and western scenic rims; sand, sea, and islands; escarpment and range; the granite belt; and far north Queensland, above the Tropic of Capricorn. Travelers will find precise directions for reaching all the parks and trails; difficulty ratings and notes about the special attractions of each hike; as well as vivid descriptions of what will be encountered along the way. Hiking Tropical Australia is a unique and invaluable guide for the vacationing visitor, and has a wealth of information helpful to native Australian as well.

I had the good fortune to use (the first edition of) Conrad Totman's "History of Japan" in a series of introductory Japanese history courses for which I also read large parts of the two works with which it is often compared by other reviewers: George Sansom's three-volume history and the encyclopedic Cambridge history. This let me compare all three works and identify the strengths that each has relative to the others. Although I read the first edition, few major changes seem to have been made in the second edition, the main one being an expansion of the epilogue to discuss pressures associated with the war on terror and invasion of Iraq.

As a one-volume work, Totman's history can't hope to include as much detail as the other two multi-volume histories. However, it nevertheless manages to present a comprehensive and very accessible history of Japan from prehistoric times to the twenty-first century. Unlike the Cambridge history, it is actually affordable, and unlike Sansom's work it includes events following the Meiji Restoration. Totman also spends considerably more time exploring Japanese society and economy than does Sansom, who focuses mainly on political, military and high-cultural affairs.

Totman's main conceit is taking an 'ecological' approach to Japanese history that governs the book's structure even if it doesn't dominate the narrative as a whole. He divides Japanese history into four rough and somewhat overlapping periods, based on the dominant means of production: pre-agriculture, dispersed agriculture, intensive agriculture, and industrial. Each of these periods, he argues, exhibited an early high-growth phase when the spread of new techniques and technologies led to rapid increases in production and population, followed by longer periods of stasis. As a result of this approach, for instance, Totman considers the Meiji Restoration a less crucial transition than the process of industrialization that followed it later in the nineteenth century.

Totman's interpretation is plausible, and I appreciated how he uses it to provide structure to his account, without forcing all aspects of Japanese history to fit into some overarching model. His writing was also quite accessible, and often a pleasure to read. The supplemental tables, glossary, index, annotated bibliography and limited notes were also helpful. Sansom and the Cambridge history may make more complete references, but of the three I found Totman's "History of Japan" the most interesting, accessible and enjoyable to read.

The basic concept of this book of focusing less on the key people and events of history and more on the environmental, social and cultural impacts is not new and could have produced an interesting and insightful analysis of a country that is still a mystery to most Westerners. However, Totman fails to achieve this. His writing style can be tedious and he seems intent in showing off his impressive vocabulary - he certainly must get the prize for the most use of the word "adumbrate" in a book.

Ironically, therein lies the problem. He sketches over some complex issues,cultural themes and whole periods of history that without an existing deep knowledge of Japanese history and society leaves this reader, at least, more confused than enlightened. His approach of laying a lot of emphasis on the geographic and environmental influences, again, could have been very interesting but it finally degenerates into a rant about the war in Iraq and how destructive and corrupt the Industrialized world is. Rather than a diatribe against the Bush administration, it would have been useful to see an analysis of the factors that have caused the Japanese economy to stagnate compared to Europe and particularly the U.S.

In the end this book really does not give either a helpful overview of the history of Japan nor any insight into its future.

Totman tries ever-so-hard to liberate his history from traditionalist binaries such as East vs. West and industrial vs. pre-industrial. He does this by examining history from an ecological perspective, examining the interaction between man and the environment. At first, this approach seems to work remarkably well. It is possible, it seems, to deduce pre-historic settlement patterns from the environmental record alone.

Yet, the novelty of his approach begins to break down when he tries to fit all of Japanese history into four distinct stages defined by the ability of the society to extract and process resources (e.g. crops, minerals, forests, etc.). This is just old-style development theory dressed in a new suit. Also, Totman conveniently abandons the ecological model when examining such items as culture, even though he vainly tells the reader that he has not forgotten his approach! When the author has to remind the reader that he hasn't strayed from his theme, it's a sure sign that he has!

The result of all this is a highly fragmented account that is difficult to read without prior knowledge of Japanese history. If I were a professor in this field, it would be an agonizing decision to go back to Sansom's venerable 1960's volume instead of turning to the current scholarship used in Totman. And yet, Totman's book is so difficult to digest that it would probably be worth it.

Conrad Totman's A History Of Japan conceptualizes four major "ages" grounded in the material resources that sustained Japanese society: the age of foragers, dispersed agriculturalists, intensive agriculture, and industrialism. Totman beings with Stone Age society in Japan, and then moves through developments in agriculture, state-building, the blossoming of classical arts and letters, socioeconomic growth and change, domestic and diplomatic politics, social issues of class, gender and ethnicity, cultural production and the environmental effects of agricultural activity. A History Of Japan provides detailed coverage of the twentieth century when Japan grew into a much larger society and its role on the international science became militarily, economically, and culturally influential. A History Of Japan is a highly recommended, informative, scholarly, comprehensive, and "reader friendly" introduction and historical survey that will be much appreciated by students of Japanese history and culture, and has a wealth of material for the non-specialist general reader seeking to understand the Japan of antiquity as well as a contemporary and influential society.

Highly recommend this book, especially cultural historians. It is amazing to read the blend of Island and British culture.

As a graduate student in history, I was intrigued by Sahlins subject. However, Sahlins does his best to hide his subject from any reader not in "the club" -- i.e. anyone who does not speak the jargon of a structuralist (or post-structuralist) anthropologist. Sahlins is a very inaccessible (and is thus, by most rules of writing, a BAD) writer, whose elitist attitude negates any interest I may have had in his subject matter.

Marshall Sahlins, a renowned expert in Polynesian archaeology, has produced an excellent, well-written book that focuses on synchrony and diachrony in archaeology, as reflected in the early encounters between Captain Cook and the early Polynesians. This book is essential reading for scholars interested in the concepts of cyclical and linear time. The text also demonstrates that the early Polynesians, like many other non-western societies, in fact had a dynamic, recursive history before European contact; a history not based on written records but rather on a rich array of oral traditions. Essentially, this book can be used as an important frame of reference for scholars of other early oceanic societies, for example pre-Columbian societies in the Caribbean, particularly with respect to issues of European contact and indigenous time reckoning and time conception.

This book is thoroughly researched, and intelligent. It is simultaneously an account of the history of Hawai'i's integration into the world economy, a reminder of the complexity of social change in colonial contexts, and a rekindling of the beauty of structuralism

It is very useful for traveling, it can be your bible and your guardian angel, and is very updated, the only problem is that you do not have any photos of the places to visit.A "Must Have!!"

The Let's Go series is fun and irreverently informative. The Australia guide offers many budget insights and interesting facts about this great country.
I have found that the Let's Go books definitely cater well to the rough backpacker, but if you're faint of heart or looking for any fancy frills, this book is not for you.

The Let's Go books are generally pretty useful but this Australia guide is geared to backpackers. Virtually all of the hotel recommendation are hostel or camps... no options or suggestions for other hotels or price ranges. I haven't gone on the trip yet but I suspect that all the restaurant recommendation are also low budget as well. I bascially have to get another guide book to supplement this one.

it has most of the same loding options and usually a couple more. very accurate on prices. covers some areas better than lonely planet, more of a backpackers book. bad maps though. sometimes tough to get a good idea of a city.

One star is not because the Jack London stories in this book are not wonderful. It is because this book is not South Sea Tales by Jack London, which I first got from my grandfather's bookshelf and was one of the most memorable reads from my youth. It is a collection of sea stories, including four from South Sea Tales, but I have found a copy of the original stories at Barnes and Noble. One might guess that some of the stories were dropped because, like Huck Finn, they use dialogue and espouse attitudes that we now know better than to live. The stories are still great and do not deserve to become un-stories. This collection is misnamed and misleading.

London does not disappoint in this collection. His observations are as sound today as they were in his time. It was fascinating to see that London even experimented with science fiction in his story the Red One.

Sean O'Reilly
Editor-at-large
Travelers' Tales
Editor of 30 Days in the South Pacific

It's a shame Jack London's "South Sea Tales" (sometimes referred to as "Hawai'ian Stories") are not more respected, both by the masses and by literary circles. London's stories here are equally as engaging as his better-known Yukon tales ("White Fang," etc.). And the fact that the setting is so drastically different from the snowy Northern Hemisphere of his other tales represents how versatile of a writer he was. It is true, there is not a lot of character differentiation from story to story, which may annoy readers looking for a veritable "collection" of stories and yet please those other readers looking for stories that are connected and read more like chapters of a novel. Nonetheless, Hawai'i is a United State and yet, fiction from this region that is taught on an academic, American Literature collegiate level is rare. That is a shame, because this collection shows that the region is intriguing, dangerous, and beautiful, all at the same time (and what more can you want out of a short story collection)!

Eight good stories by Jack London, about the people and places of the south Pacific in 1908. Also a good long introduction by A. Grove Day which should (like all too many "introductions") only be read *after* reading the stories.

Most of the people in these stories are, of course, either victims or perpetrators (or both) of one of those long painful Western exploitations of a less civilized ("less civilized") part of the world. London knows that that's what's going on, and he writes with sympathy for all concerned, and without the more self-conscious bemoaning that would be expected of a XXIst century writer. To the modern reader, then, he can sometimes seem cold-blooded, but seldom disturbingly so.

The prose is fine and spare most of the time, and never gets in the way of the tale. The places and the tales are memorable. There is not a great variety of character and setting; the eight stories together could almost be a single novel. His voyage on the Snark (which inspired these stories) clearly left him with a strong and single impression of this place and these people, and he conveys that impression skillfully along to us.

Definitely worth reading.

I find this guide very useful in terms of choosing the resorts. It has good descriptions of all the resorts in terms of facilities, clients, food served and activities. The resorts are in different chapters according to the different atolls. So, it is a good guide for choosing the right resort according to one's taste

Like all Lonely Planet guides, a mine of useful information, that proves invaluable in picking the resort that best suits your interests and pocket. A good section on diving and snorkelling. Well worth the money.

There are four main tour books for the Maldives, and this one is a good place to start. (Another good one is the Michelin guide.) This book gives a general overview of the islands and many of the resorts. Divers will want the Divers' Guide to the Maldives to fill out the information here.

It was a good book about an overview of Maldives but did not focus much on the interior travel within Maldives and getting around its myriad of islands

This is a nice, concise guide, to micronesia, covering Palua, Kiribati, the Marianas, Nauro, The federated states of Micronesia, and other small islands that stretch between New Zealand and Hawaii. There are a number of recommendations for the best way to travel between islands and how to plan your journey. THis is not a book that is aimed for the specialist, for scuba-divers it needs to be supplimented and the same goes for those intending to travel by boat. However the book is excellent when it comes to history, restaurants hikes and hotels. It is a wonderful guide-book, indispensible for the island hopping traveller.

Seth J. Frantzman

I have been to Micronesia twice. The first time I lived there for a couple of years, and the second time I went as a tourist. I purchased this book before returning the second time. It had been seven years since I had been in Micronesia, and some of it had changed drastically while some parts hadn't changed at all. This book was a great guide, and helped me to find some of the better spots that I had somehow managed to miss while I lived there. Here is how the book stacked up. THE GOOD: 1) This book covers all of Micronesia, and that is no small task. It has information about all parts, ranging from Palau to the Marshall Islands. 2) This book gives a lot of information about each island. It explains the history, tells you what you should take, tells you about hotels and restaurants (from the five star establishments to the low end ones), tells you about how to travel to each island as well as how to travel around while on the island and many other bits of useful information to make your stay more enjoyable. 3) The maps are good. They aren't super detailed, but are nice maps of the islands and the villages on them. Quite good enough for any sight seeing or exploring that you might want to do. 4) This book tells you about the popular and good diving spots, hiking spots and historical points. So even though some of the book may be outdated (the nicest hotels in Guam) there are some things that will probably never change (how to hike to a nice hidden waterfall on Pohnpei.) THE BAD: Parts of Micronesia are changing quickly, and this book fails to capture those changes. For example, the list of popular places to stay, eat and shop on Guam wasn't very helpful since the island had changed so much in the past five years (since the book was published). To counteract this information lag, I just picked up tourist publications while I was on Guam, and that updated me enough to fill in all the gaps. OVERALL: It is like a computer that is a couple of years old: sure it is outdated some, but it still works nicely, and it is much better than having nothing at all!

As a merchant marine, "travel" comes with the job. I have long been a collector of maps and travel guides, always searching for items that are the most user friendly & seeingly written for my budget, not one of the Rockerfeller's. I will tip my hat to Lonely Planet here. They accomplish the impossible with every book. Never did I expect to open a single guide book, not to mention a series of them & find myself so mesmerized by what was written. Their guides are not the commonly found or should I say "forced" "stay at the $$$$ hotel, eat at the $$$$ restaurant"... They give you such a wide, realistic range of places to go, visit, stay & enjoy, that they change you from the prospective dreamer ho-hummingly flipping pages in a book to the traveler that sees his/her goals come to pass. After all, isn't that what we really want out of travel? As for this particular guide book... I have been in Guam 4 months on and 4 months off since February of 1996, visiting Saipan as part of work & Rota & Tinian on my own time... I have used & abused this book (Cover still intact) & I have had many co-workers borrow it, with everyone coming away a satisfied reader. So, whether it be Guam, Saipan or any part of Micronesia, this is one guide book that I strongly recommend & if you are doing an around the world trip with Japan as your next stop... Do the right thing... Get the Japan Guide book, but also shell out a few extra dollars and purchase the Japanese Audio Pack. It is hands down the easiest (& one of the most economical) basic language teachers out there & it even comes with a Phrase Book! My current Lonely Planet Guide library includes: Micronesia, Japan (Book & Audio pack), Korea, Singapore-Brunei-Malaysia, Tonga, Southwest USA (Arizona-New Mexico-Utah), & Maldives & Islands Of The East Indian Ocean. I look to expand as I am planing a trip to Argentina's Andes in 2000. A satisfied ! customer I shall remain... I hope you, the reader of my review, read this & come to realize what wonderful publications Lonely Planet offers us. If you do, step back an use AMAZON.COM for all your travel needs. You will be glad you listened. (You know, I always thought these reviews were written by paid personel somewhere, TRUST me this isn't the case at all Customer satisfaction is my reward!) Happy Travels to all!

This is an OK guidebook for information about culture and hotels. I found that it covered all the basics. It covers all of the island nations in the Micronesia area. The section on Palau and Yap were particularly useful to me. However, I thought that there wasn't enough information about scuba diving. Most of the people visiting this region are interested in scuba diving. There isn't enough information on dive shops or dive sites. In fact, there aren't any maps of dive sites at all. If you're going to go diving, I would try another guidebook. If you're just going to go sightseeing, this is just fine. Also another thing I would like to see in the next edition is a few more photos. Sometimes photos can help you decide whether to go to a place or not. With more photos, I think this guidebook would attract more people to these lovely islands.

is an excellent travel memoir (partially fictionalized) in the same vein as Typee.

Typee struck me most by its pictorial quality and sumptuous imagery. In Omoo, however, Melville shores up his powers of characterization, creating a fine supporting cast of individuals.

If you are only familiar with Melville's later work, you will be surprised by the wry sense of humor Melville flashes throughout. Detailed descriptions of practical jokes, drunken brawls, and cultural faux-pas will make you smile, and sometimes laugh out loud. Certain passages are actually a riot!

Also, in this novel (as compared to Typee), Melville's intrusions into the narrative are less glaring than they are in the previous novel. Yes, some of the diversions take the steam out of the narrative, as in Typee, but these diversions oftentimes give necessary exposition to illuminate characters' motivations.

The beginning of the novel effectively captures the claustrophobic atmosphere aboard a whaling ship, and the crew are indeed a motley lot.

Though you do not have to read Typee before you read Omoo (although the first page of Omoo is, literally, a continuation of the last page of Typee), I recommend you read both in conjunction. Be prepared to absorb a beautifully rendered atmosphere, describing the life of two roving beachcombers in the South Pacific in the early 19th century.

I am approaching the writer Melville with little prior knowledge about the man Melville. Apart from the Whale, read 30 years ago, I knew only Typee before taking up Omoo. Omoo is of course a sequel to Typee. While Typee's core theme is the narrator's life in captivity among an intact tribe of 'savages' in the Marquesas, Omoo continues his adventures as an island hopper, a sailor involved in a mutiny, a jailbird, a farm worker...
All is told with a light hand, in short chapters. Interspersed are thoughts about colonialism and missionaries and about the fate of the native population of the islands. There is lots of ethnology on mainly two exotic tribes: the population of the whaling ships, and the people who live on Tahiti. The attacks on the missionaries seem to have been toned down a bit in view of criticisms at home. The sequel was less well received than the first book.
What strikes me as curious about Omoo is the extent to which the author hides behind a mocking and sometimes self-ironic tone. He is not much given to reflections about himself, or at least not to sharing those with us. What do we conclude about the character of the hero? Obviously he has some problems integrating in his various social environments. He is always the outsider. He runs from his first ship, is an exotic guest in Typee, runs away, joins half-heartedly in a mutiny on his second ship, stays apart from the jail crowd and 'walks away' from prison, doesn't like the work on the potato farm, escapes from some unclear danger in the next village... Would one extrapolate so far, does it seem likely that he will succeed in settling down to any longer term project? He seems unsteady and shallow, aloof without much depth to offer. The story itself is fairly simple, the author does not appear to have a message above the adventure narration and a few rather superficial thoughts on the evils of civilization. In other words, one hopes he will grow up some time. Let's see.

This book can be read on its own even though it is the sequel to TYPEE. There are 82 short chapters that cover life on a whaler and various experiences on the island of Tahiti as well as surrounding islands. We get a feel for life on a whaler and for life on the islands and how foreigners, especially missionaries, influenced the natives for the worse.

Omoo means a rover or one who wanders from island to island. Thus the title fits the feel of the narrative, but also points out a shortcoming as the book roves too much. We are taken from situation to situation a bit too abruptly. There are many characters and events that are introduced, but usually only on a superficial level. I would have liked more in-depth analysis from Melville as many of the characters were just that--characters. Also there are many, for me, unknown nautical terms used that made the reading hard work.

However, enough of the stories give you the sense of being "omoo", especially in a time vastly different from our own, that I recommend the book, even with the many sections that make you plod.

The word that keeps coming to mind as I think about this book is "charming". Melville was in a good mood when he wrote "Omoo", no doubt enjoyed looking back on a very pleasurable period of his still-young life. While it is true that "Omoo" wasn't nearly as successful as "Typee" had been, it is still an impressive work for a young man in his mid-twenties.

I enjoyed his portraits of the people he meets, and especially of his doctor friend, "Long Ghost". His descriptions of Polynesian life and the historical context are quite interesting. And it's funny: Melville had very good sense of humor, displays it throughout "Omoo".

While the book is mainly a picaresque story of adventure, recounting the details of daily life in an exotic setting, and is a much happier book than "Typee", there are a few scenes that preview Melville's later narrative power. Here is the "Julia" in a tropical Pacific gale:

"Under such a press of canvas, and with the heavy sea running, the barque, diving her bows under, now and then shipped green glassy waves, which, breaking over the head-rails, fairly deluged that part of the the ship, and washed clear aft."

And here is a glimpse of the brooding quality of his later work:

"But my meditations were soon interrupted by a gray, spectral shadow cast over the heaving billows. It was the dawn, soon followed by the first rays of the morning. They flashed into view at one end of the arched night, like - to compare great things with small - the gleamings of Guy Fawkes's lantern in the vaults of the Parliament House. Before long, what seemed a live ember rested for a moment on the rim of the ocean, and at last the blood-red sun stood full and round in the level East, and the long sea-day began."

But these are very isolated examples. By and large, "Omoo" is a great contrast with Melville's other books. It is a light, easy, and amusing read. Highly recommended for Melville fans.

Helpful critical works on Melville:

Newton Arvin - "Herman Melville"
D.H. Lawrence -"Studies in Classic American Literature".
F.O. Matthiessen - "American Renaissance"

Note: This particular edition is from the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's works, and is an MLA Approved Text. As such, it is authoritative, but it lacks an explanatory introduction, which may be a slight drawback.